The aftermath of the French "no" to the European Constitution

The French finally decided to vote widely for the "no" to the European Constitution. If they did so, it is mainly due to the French domestic situation. France is indeed economically collapsing. Huge deficits and high rates of unemployment are definitively part of the daily French economic and social landscape. Many French citizens are afraid of foreign workers, and more particularly of polish plumbers, who would worsen this situation by taking their jobs. The "no" towards the European Constitution has to be understood as a claim for more protectionism. The French definitively want Europe to protect them from the rest of the world.

Of course our organization, Liberté Chérie, considers this position as a wrong economic way of thinking. History has shown and is still showing that the best system is the free trade system and that socialist systems have always failed and will always fail. In European countries, and especially in the UK or in the countries of the ex USSR, people understood this. Unfortunately that's still not the case in France. Have the French realized that polish plumbers coming to France would make plumbing prices go down and will increase so forth their purchasing power? Have they realized that polish plumbers coming to France would make the Polish wealthier without the help of any subsidy? Have they realized that wealthier Polish implies the birth of a new market for our high added value products and bring forth many job creations in France?

If French people are still believing in socialist politics, I personally think that this is mainly due to our education system: when you graduate from high school you usually have learned Keynes and Marx but very rarely Adam Smith or Alexis de Tocqueville. This explains why libertarian ideas are so unpopular. If you take a look back at the electoral campaign for the European Constitution, you will notice that there was no debate around libertarian ideas in France. Libertarian ideas seem to be necessarily bad ideas which do not even deserve being part of the debate. Hopefully, only the French are so strongly brain washed in Europe.

Anyway France has rejected the European Constitution because the French wanted more socialism. This is more than amazing as this European Constitution is more socialist than the French or the American one. And now that France is becoming weaker in Europe thanks to the "no" vote, if a new Constitution had to be written, it would never be as socialist as this one because the French bargaining power would be weaker. Jacques Chirac even said it to the French citizens: this Constitution had been considerably influenced by the French. Now, it seems obvious that France will have the greatest difficulties to impose its political system.

And this is a good news: we don't want the French system to contaminate the other European countries. The other countries don't need our unemployment, our taxes and our paralysing laws. With a weaker France we can even now hope that the other 24 countries, which are all more libertarian than France, will have more bargaining power and will guide France to the reform path.

But don't be fooled. The change in France will not come from the inside: it will come from the outside, it will come from Europe as it will be harder for France to stop libertarianism in the EU. But as far as the inside is concerned, nothing will change. The poor internal debate that we had without any libertarian consideration and the poor speech that Chirac gave to his population yesterday bears witness of the expected immobilism. Jacques Chirac will in fact make some changes in his government. Instead of his friend Jean-Pierre Raffarin, he will ask another friend of his to become Prime Minister. What can we hope of this? It seems clear that we cannot hope any radical change from the inside of France. If Jacques Chirac really wants to satisfy the French, he should resign. France needs it and showed twice in one year that a radical change was awaited. Europe with a weaker France will certainly be able to implement radical changes more easily.